Porter v. Director of Patuxent Institution

⁶⁴⁰ Sybert, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. On December 26, 1961 the applicant, Thomas H. Porter, III, was sentenced to 2 years in the Maryland House of Correction by the Criminal Court of Baltimore on a charge of statutory burglary. He was sent to Patuxent Institution for examination, and on February 8, 1963, after a jury found him to be a defective delinquent at a hearing at which he was represented by counsel, he was committed to Patuxent. On February 11, 1963 he filed a “Motion for a New Trial”.

The clerk of the lower court wrote Porter informing him, in effect, that the motion would be treated as an application for leave to appeal to this Court, and no objection by Porter appears in the record. Consequently, we shall so treat the motion in this Court. Porter raises several issues with respect to the defective delinquency hearing below, which are summarized as follows: (1) that Dr. Boslow, the Director of Patuxent Institution, gave false, misleading and exaggerated statements in his testimony against him; (2) that the State’s Attorney gave a misleading and false closing statement to the jury “when he stated that Petitioner was tried on facts” — his contention being that psychology and psychiatry are theory only and not fact as stated by the State’s Attorney; and (3) that Code (1962 Cum. Supp.), Art. 31B, Sec. 6 (a), requires that a person have two or more convictions of a crime or misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment before he can be subjected to a proceeding for defective delinquency, whereas the applicant has had only one conviction.

As to the first contention, applicant makes only a bare allegation with no reference to specific false testimony of Dr. Boslow. He seems merely to reassert that he is not a defective delinquent and that Dr. Boslow was wrong in saying he was. On its face, Dr. Boslow’s report filed in the proceeding does not indicate any false or misleading statements. In reality, this